When should you use assertions in your programs?
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Assertion
When should you use assertions in your programs?
Re: Assertion
Moved from What's wrong section.
Have you asked this with an internet Search engine?
If you don't understand my answer, don't ignore it, ask a question.
jamesh (January 3rd, 2014)
Re: Assertion
When to use assertions:
- To prove a state, or to prove a state doesn't exist.
- To check preconditions/postconditions in internal code (eg private methods of a library)
- To provide feedback to the developers as changes are made to a programs structure
- As part of the unit tests.
When not to use assertions:
- To prove correctness in a given state.
- To resolve run time problems.
- To check parameters or null objects
- In a deployed product.
All of this is debatable but a rule of thumb I read years ago is that assertions prove correctness during development whilst exceptions prove robustness during use. Much like logging they are designed to be turned off for deployment and I generally use them for pretty ridiculous sanity checks in case I happen to break something critical.
jamesh (January 3rd, 2014)
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